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Lyssea

WH40K: Redcoat

Around him everything was chaos. Red and Green swirled as if trapped in a storm, while a constant crackling from Las-weapons filled the air between the bangs of heavier weapons.
It was even hard to hear the screams of pain and rage above the battle itself, not to mention the orders given out by the command located behind the lines. Had it not been for the vox-channel and the com-beads the orders might as well not been spoken.
Not that they did much as it was, with the full might of the Emperor's Sledgehammer hitting the oncoming horde or Orks. Both sides were using similar tactics, the one of "Shoot it until it stops moving", and little needed to be said to guide that.

But around him, just that small range of his space, there was stillness. The Imperial Guard would not step close to him if they could at all avoid it, for the knowledge of the blessed tools of the Omnissiah scared their small minds.
Not that he minded, they were but flesh and bone with no intentions of correcting these mistakes. They were content with the weak, sickly bodies they had been born with and they refused the wonderfulness of the Machine God.
They were, at best, beasts with a use.

A scream of pain drew his attention. Not because of the pain or the screaming itself, both of those existed to no end here on this Battlefield, but because the Imperial Guard that had uttered it had falled almost literally at his feet. He watched the still-alive man for a few moments. Then he reached down with a mechandrite and grabbed the lasrifle guard was clutching in his hands.
With a small yank it was freed and lifted up before the Tech-Priest's eyes, slowly turned by the grip of the mechandrite to allow him to see it from all angels. The weapon was relatively well cared for, cleaned and clearly with all rites properly followed. The single exception to this was the initials someone - presumably the dying guard - had carved into the metal of the handle.
He grasped the very same handle with a cybernetic hand, weighting the blessed weapon in his hand. He needed to do no more to realize that the weapon was jammed, the sacred Machine Spirits within angered by a slight misalignment in the weapon itself.
For a guard this would take time to clear as they would need to push and poke and shake in an attempt to fix the issue. He, on the other hand, had no such problems as he gave the weapon a light smack and a prayer. This corrected the mistake and together with the prayer it appeased the spirits enough to make the weapon work.

At his feet the man still lay, grasping for the red robes as if the servant of the Omnissiah were to be of assistance to such failing of the flesh. The tech-priest watched the man and somewhere deep inside stirred the compassion for a fellow human. He could not leave him to suffer here on the battlefield. So he shifted the lasrifle from one hand to the other and pointed the barrel square between the eyes of the fallen man.
A loud crack, like a small lightning-bolt, mixed with the hundreds and thousands of others on the battlefield as yet another corpse was added to the long list that would be compiled at the end of the day.

With the problem of compassion solved the Tech-Priest gave the weapon to one of his servitors for safe-keeping until the battle was over. This particular one was little more then a beast of burden, carrying its heavy load so that the priest did not need to do so himself.
The Tech-Priest once more turned his eyes to the only things he would bother to save here on the battlefield. Hellhounds, Chimeras, and the other holy machines of the Omnissiah. Humans were disposable, the weapons was not.